Here we have some standard female-fronted folky pop, like Suran Song in Stag or Flashing Red Airplane. The singing is not as distinctive as Bettie Serveert’s Carol van Dyk, but it’s off in that direction. “A Quiet Life” provides a good example of this. The piano is quite distinctive during the chorus.
“Moth” is a rainy-day-style song. It’s not specifically dreary, but it’s littered with somber moments, similar to what Lisa Germano is famous for.
“Flowers Strung on a Tree” is as good as any other track. (They do kind of all sound the same.) Not the best album for driving in traffic, but it’s good for studying or while watching football with the TV on mute.
Bands such as Rasputina get away with this because they’re a little weird. The Million Stars come across as straight-shooters, and it makes the music less distinctive. Again, it’s good, but there is nothing compelling about it. I welcome it to my library, but it will not receive special treatment.

Holy shit. The first track, “Not the One”? Has the same melody and beat as “Three Small Words” by Josie and the Pussycats. This cannot be an accident. It’s too similar. Holy crap I can’t believe it. Of course I like the song. If it were Noelle LeBlanc from Damone singing instead of Kay Hanley it would be the same thing.
This album confuses the hell out of me. “Check Me Out” is the splitting image of a “From the Attic”-era Damone track with the musical accompaniment of a Kelly Clarkson song. You know who’d like this? Dakin. You know who else would? Me.
But the reason this album confuses the hell out of me is because it is completely overproduced (hence the Kay Hanley and Damone references), yet I had to manually enter the track information in iTunes. Why would you spend so much on production when you’re self-releasing an album? It boggles the mind.
This could have been on my top 10 of the year (no link intentional), but it released in mid-December. To quote Gary Radnich when he quotes that other guy, who does that? But seriously, this entire album is great. It is the direction emo was going in until all the guys in that scene remembered that they were insecure and got 50 piercings and tattoos and started screaming. But for five minutes, this was where emo was headed, and I was damn excited.
Another great keyword for this: This album reminds me of Rocking Horse Winner, whose album “Horizon” just might be my album of the decade (no link intentional again). But this review is about Radagun, and they are awesome… dare I say, no. I don’t dare say it.
“Lie to Me” slows it down a bit and again sounds a lot like Damone. “Dear Self” adds the disco beat that a lot of today’s new music has. They’re playing with a stacked deck here. It sounds better than, say, Metro Station because they’re better than Metro Station. It seems that they made this track because they were told to, though. Well, it is what the kids like, I guess. “Party Girl” does this too. Same music style as bis but with less-frenetic vocals.
And it goes on. This entire album is fucking amazing. It’s why I don’t give up and just listen to the music I have all the time.

Kristina Morland has me whipped into a fine frenzy on “Pidgin Music.” This album actually has a real Pinoisepop feel to it, although I think Morland wala paki alam about that. But the vocals and musical style remind me of an acoustic Sixes and Sevens or Moonpools and Caterpillars. Grey Anne, too, especially on “Day Dream.” This music is very beautiful.
“Echo Charting” is another winner, using all kinds of instruments that someone more cultured than myself would recognize. Oh, the liner notes. Violin and clarinet. Sure. That could be this! It has a very accessible sound; that’s the point.
“Silence” is the last track and is a subdued version of the rest of the album, but is still a fundamentally sound track, and it reminds me of what Ruby’s Leslie Rankin would do when she didn’t feel like being crazy. It really happened, once or twice.
You can’t go wrong with any of these tracks. High-quality vocals and musical accompaniment make for a quality listening experience.

It seems that the Sprint wireless card that Yahoo! gave me is too fast for its own good. I tried to upload episodes with it, and it would upload the video to YouTube so quickly that YouTube would abort the upload. I mean we’re talking a 600MB file in 30 seconds. That’s fast. So how will I get through this?

I found a good workaround. I just jump on the Yahoo! VPN, which is only so fast, and now it uploads at a more pedestrian speed. The same 600MB file should take about two hours to upload. Now I can Fixodent and forget it.